I've dabbled with Placement Ads in the past, but always pretty much concentrated 100% on the Search ads, as that's what I know most about. However, I'm starting to venture into placement ads and have a query for those who use it a lot: Is the best way, to advertise across hundreds of websites on the Adsense network and let it to run for a few days before deciding which works and which doesn't? That's the idea that immediately comes to me. Has anybody tried going across the *whole* content network (extreme I know) and then kept the sites that work and blocked the sites that don't? Kept the sites that bring in cheap clicks and blocked the expensive ones? Advice would be appreciated.
Have you got conversion tracking code installed? I generally run the clients accounts for a week and then analyse which websites are converting. A high CTR and low CPC might not mean anything if they are contributing to conversions. Then again, I don't exclude anything until after 2 weeks of bad results / stats.
Oh yes, conversion code is on. That's been there since I started using Adwords. I guess I just need to getting the traffic and then make decisions in a week or two. It seems pretty straight forward, it'll just be expensive in the early days until I weed out all the poor sites.
Yes, and as I said, really focus on the ones that convert rather than just the sites with a good CTR, etc.
Well the first major day ... 842 impressions so far without a single click. I'm thinking the wrong ads, for the wrong type of page. I'd have thought a 'normal' CTR is much lower than that on the Search Network?
Personally, i make sure to view each and every site before deciding to put it in as one of my targeted sites. I take a look at the adsense placement location, the content, etc to make sure it looks favorable for a decent ctr. I also use cost per impressions option, so that is why i am careful , because you can blow through the impressions with no clicks in a hurry and it will cost you. chuck
It depends if you are talking Google Content or Placement. Placement lets you chose the site placements. When creating a Content campaign limit your keywords to about 15 per Ad Group and keep them all broad match. Just from looking at them you should be able to get a sense of the theme. Run it for a week and then generate a placement report and remove poorly performing sites by excluding them (if you have enough data). Also start adding in negative keywords. Keep doing this for 3-4 weeks. Once you find a few that are performing really well ad those site as Placement targeted as well.
When you say 15 keywords per ad group, will this mean that the domain in the content network will need to be related to ALL 15 keywords, or just one?
Google will look at all 15 keywords when evaluating if a domain matches those keywords. This does not mean every keyword will be on the page your ad will appear on, but yes it will need to be relevant to all 15.